January 1, 2003

  Ich bein ein vegetarian

By Paul Reidinger

THE CURTAIN RISES on Act I, Scene 1 of the latest New Year. My resolutions? None, as usual, except for the (as usual) vague memo to self to do as little harm as possible, especially in regard to other sentient creatures, including that most difficult to deal with of sentient creatures, one's fellow human beings. It has long seemed to me that reducing misery in a world made largely of misery (and misery largely of our own making) is the one true ethical life. And – a hard notion to accept in our goal- and success-oriented culture – virtue lies in making the effort, not in achieving some specific reduction in, or the outright elimination of, wretchedness, the latter being of course impossible.

For we omnivores, some of the more uncomfortable day-to-day moments in ethics have to do with eating animal flesh. We are invited, by shrink-wrapped packages in antiseptically lit supermarkets, to put from our minds any wonderings about where those steaks and chops actually come from. Yet we do wonder. We cut back; we become pickier; without making a public fuss, we find ways and moments not to eat meat, or at least to work ourselves a rung or two down the ladder of sentience when choosing what to have for dinner.

It is a slightly foggy, twilit world to be groping one's way through (so like the wider world itself, really: a jumbled topography of glasses half full and half empty), and so a place like Haveli, "serving Hindu vegetarian cuisine," as the menu says, offers at least one brief, shining moment of relieving clarity. We are all vegetarians there; indeed, we would all be vegans but for bare hints of yogurt and spiced cottage cheese on a few of the plates.

I do not really associate vegetarianism with irony, but the tone of Haveli is somehow cheerfully martial. "We're in the Army now!" we reassured ourselves as we took our places in what seemed like a chow line from M*A*S*H, with a Bollywood spin, pointing at what we wanted and watching it be slung onto plates on a tray. For lunch, you might find yourself pointing at curried potatoes or curried mixed vegetables for $3.99 (with rice), or some of both for $4.99. Samosas (the triangles of fried pastry stuffed with shredded carrots, cabbage, lentils, and potatoes) are $1.50 each, while kachori, golf ball-like spheres of fried pastry stuffed with spiced lentils, are 75¢ each. The food is good, fresh, honest, simple, healthy; if armies actually did eat this well ... I shudder to think.

Although Haveli sits on one of the grubbier streets in the city, its sparsely decorated, linoleum-rich interior is bright and clean. That might help explain the middle-class aura of the patronage (including, it must be said, us). Or perhaps Julia Child-approved Tu Lan, almost directly across the street, helps soothe any qualms the Volvo riche might have about urban grit. Or perhaps it's just another sign of the affinity between affluent white (non-Jewish) Californians, estranged from the Christian past, and the religions of the Far East.

You will detect no sign of that affinity at Fly, in the Western Addition, though the place does have a mystical mood all its own and it does offer a lot of sake drinks and the menu manages, in the best San Francisco tradition, to be more than vegetarian friendly without implying that flesh eaters are blood-soaked ogres. Fly commands, gastronomically speaking, a view to the south and west; its food – a noshable mélange of small plates, sandwiches, salads, and pizzas – reflects mainly Mexican and Mediterranean influences. The big bright flavors of cilantro and kalamata olives and balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic help lull the meat-minded into not noticing that about half the dishes have no meat.

One that does have it, in a rather big way, is the Mmmm ... Meat pizza ($8.95), a muscly disk of medium-thick dough so generously layered with sausage, pepperoni, prosciutto, green peppers, and mozzarella cheese that it actually lives up to its name. Like a dwarf star, it's not particularly impressive in diameter, but it is dense. Nearly enough for the both of us.

As it happened, we'd ordered another pizza, just to be on the safe side: the blanco ($8.35), a meatless combination of tastinesses (garlic sauce, Jack cheese, sun-dried tomato, artichokes, red onion, and scallion) that somehow didn't quite come together. But we weren't really disappointed, in part because of the mighty meat pie and because we'd opened with a pair of lovely (vegetarian) dishes: hummus and tapenade with warm pita-bread triangles ($6.25) and a "fruits to nuts" salad ($7.25), a big bowl of mixed greens with apple slices, chunks of Gorgonzola, and spiced walnuts dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette someone in the kitchen definitely tasted, and adjusted, before serving. The taster was, apparently, looking for a certain effect: of fruitiness balanced with a bit of acid and a bit of pungency, of cream and crunch in tandem. And mission accomplished, so say we all.

Fly feels like the sort of place you'd want to hold your next séance. Despite the many windows looking onto the corner of Divisadero and Fulton, the tone is speakeasyish and cool in the way that so much of San Francisco used to be cool until cool started wearing Banana Republic and driving shiny new (leased) Mercedeses and becoming, sad to say, deeply uncool – a proverbial fly in the ointment of cool, you might say.